


Five Ways it Could Have Ended for Curtis Everett

by aunt_zelda



Category: Snowpiercer (2013)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Cannibalism, Gen, Gun Violence, Guns, M/M, Mercy Killing, Movie Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 18:35:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1909443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aunt_zelda/pseuds/aunt_zelda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes he dies. Sometimes he lives. Sometimes he's a hero. Sometimes he's a martyr. Sometimes he's a villain. </p><p>What would have happened if ...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Ways it Could Have Ended for Curtis Everett

**Author's Note:**

> So, loved the movie, wouldn't change a thing, the ending is fantastic just the way it is. 
> 
> But I got talking with my friend after we'd seen it and I started to think of alternate endings. Ways things could have gone if a few things went differently, if different choices were made by the characters. 
> 
> SPOILERS for the entire movie.

_One_

Curtis is in agony. He writhes on the floor, screaming, blood gushing from his stump. He did it. He finally managed it. 

His arm is taken away, to be given to the hungry horde. He sees it leave his line of sight, vanish. He tries to flex the fingers but feels nothing. Nothing but pain.

Gilliam and his men try to stop the bleeding. This is the most dangerous moment; if the bleeding can’t be stopped, death is certain. Death, followed by devouring. There is no wasting of good meat in here. 

Curtis begins to realize that they can’t stop the bleeding. 

“Do it,” he begs Gilliam, pressing his knife into Gilliam’s remaining hand. “Do it. Do it. Do it. Please.”

Gilliam waits, until it’s certain that the bleeding can’t be staunched. He leans down and presses the knife against Curtis’ throat.

And it’s fitting, Curtis realizes, as his throat opens and his lifeblood seeps out, that the knife he would have used to kill Edgar is what they use to kill him. Maybe they’ll feed Edgar with a rag soaked in Curtis’ blood. 

Curtis blacks out, hearing them gnawing on his arm. 

 

_Two_

The gun is louder than anything Curtis has ever heard. 

He has no way of knowing that the rebellion will carry on after he is shot. That Edgar will rush forward and lead them, that the guards will fall and their guns will be taken by the tail sectioners. That they will find Namgoong Minsu and take the water car, but be unable to move beyond it, men with axes blocking any further progress and slaughtering many of them.

Curtis feels the bullet enter his skull and dies before he hits the floor. 

 

_Three_

He chooses Edgar.

He chooses Edgar, and Mason escapes. 

They regroup, and when Mason returns she has men with guns and bullets. Bullets, it turns out, are not extinct. 

Edgar tackles a man aiming for Curtis. The gun goes off and sprays bullets and blood into the air. Edgar’s blood. Edgar’s chest is riddled with holes. 

Curtis doesn’t remember much of what follows. He seizes a pair of axes and dives into the fray, hacks at limbs and heads and legs. The axes lodge in a man’s chest and he takes a gun, starts shooting wildly. 

The fight lasts for days, he finds out later. Eventually Mason sends a message, offering a truce. The tail sectioners are permitted to keep the length of the train they have conquered, the water car and the prison car and the guards’ bunk section. The protein bars shall be no more, rations will be small but they will be real food. 

Small victories. Not enough for their losses. Tanya died in the struggle; so did Andrew. Grey took so many wounds protecting Gilliam that his body resembled strips of flesh rather than a human; he died two nights after the treaty. 

They never find out what happens to the children. They never reach the engine, or taste a steak. 

Nam talks, sometimes, about how the outside is warming up. He points out the window to a plane, every year, that is slowly being uncovered. Curtis starts to see it too, as the years go on. 

Someday, they’ll have to do something about that. 

Someday, but not today. 

 

_Four_

Curtis listens to Wilford. 

Curtis listens, and accepts his fate. Gilliam wanted this, Gilliam wanted him to be the leader. 

He sends Nam and Yona back to their cells. He starts a new system for replacing the engine part: every four hours, the child is taken out another takes their place, round and round the cycle goes, all day and all night. There aren’t enough children to make the rotation perfect, but it is no longer one or two tail section children taking the brunt of the work alone. 

Edgar, it turns out, was not killed in the steam baths after all. He survived, miraculously. Curtis brings him to the front, feeds him some of that fabled steak. He fucks Edgar in Wilford’s old bed, over Wilford’s old table, against the walls and on the floor. 

It’s not a perfect life, but it’s all they have. 

Edgar wants Nam and Yona let out of their cells. Edgar wants to know about the outside. Edgar wants the children freed and spends his days trying to figure out a way to replace the children with a contraption cobbled together from scrap metal and ingenuity. Edgar wants and wants and _wants_.

Curtis never tells Edgar about Gilliam’s betrayal, never tells him about his mother or that day with the knives. 

Eventually Edgar, pushed to the brink, stabs Curtis. Curtis falls, lets himself go limp, knowing that those secrets will die with him, and Edgar will never have to know the horrible truths. 

Curtis knows that Edgar will be a good leader, a better leader, one untainted by Gilliam and Wilford’s machinations. They’d expected Edgar to die, after all, and never thought to train him for a role they envisioned. Edgar will lead humanity into the future, to their salvation. 

Curtis dies with a smile on his lips.

 

_Five_

They are broken and bloodied, but they are alive. 

They somehow survived the explosion, the doors to Wilford’s car taking the brunt of the damage. The train itself was derailed, but the front remains mostly intact. 

They crawl outside, wrapped in the furs of the junkies. Curtis can hear the distant cries of people from surviving cars, confused and frightened. They will need a leader, soon, and he supposes he shall have to serve them as such. 

This is not the future Gilliam and Wilford had mapped out. They would have been content to keep the cycle going, keep the train going, until the tracks broke or a mountain fell and the train derailed anyways. By that point, Curtis imagines, the only survivors would have been train babies, people whose whole lives had been confined to those tiny compartments, not knowing how dirt felt or what birds looked like. Humanity would have floundered and died out, unable to eke out a living in a vast and unfamiliar landscape.

It is not so cold as he had expected. He remembers winters colder than this, from his childhood. 

“Look,” Yona points. 

A polar bear.

Curtis laughs, and laughs, and Nam looks at him like Curtis the crazy one hyped up on drugs.

“Global warming!” Curtis laughs, pointing at the bear. The bear stares at them quizzically before wandering off. 

“Mama said no animals could live outside,” Timmy says. “Mama said they all froze.”

“They did.” Curtis stares at the retreating bulk of the bear. “But they’re coming back. The world is warming up again.”

Nam says something. His translator was smashed in the explosion, so Yona translates “He says we must go south. It will be warmest there, at the belt of the earth.”

Curtis nods. Not everyone will make it. Some will sicken and die, there won’t be much to eat, and it will be slow going. But they will make it. They’ll make carts and sledges from the wreckage of the train, and take turns pulling their supplies and the children over the snows. 

Curtis nods, and turns back to the wreckage of the train. First, they need to assemble the survivors. Then they need to organize their supplies and food. 

Humanity will find a way. Not build on the backs of children shoved into a tiny hellhole, not by oppressing the many so the few might live in luxury, not by keeping the real food for the rich and feeding the poor roaches. And not by worshiping an engine, and the man who built it, like a god. 

They will survive together, as equals. Curtis will not punish the front sectioners for their actions in the past, he will not force them to be slaves to the remaining tail sectioners (if any tail sectioners remain, he and the children might be the only ones left.) All must be forgiven, if they are to survive now. 

And they will survive.


End file.
